


bad idea queen

by bloodsweatspit



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27252199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsweatspit/pseuds/bloodsweatspit
Summary: a fish pines over a trash princess.
Kudos: 9
Collections: Canada Moist Talkers Fanfiction





	bad idea queen

ziwa is not the best batter in the league, or even the best on the team. they were captain for awhile, but not for any particular reason, and they weren’t very good at it. they aren’t particularly attractive or smart or funny (or, if they’re being honest with themself, all that kind or caring.) they aren’t strongest or fastest; they don’t have the best handwriting or cook the best or anything else like that. what ziwa _does_ have on everyone else: they are the absolute best at making bad decisions.

as a kid they always had the most broken bones and scraped knees. first to swing out over the creek and jump; last to get off the train tracks when they played chicken. they never had to be dared to pick up the gross bug, steal candy from the drugstore, mouth off to a teacher.

in high school ziwa convinced a couple friends to go mushroom hunting in the woods hoping to get high. they ate the wrong kind and had to get their stomach pumped. they drank a bottle of cough syrup and then went to gym class and played soccer, feeling like they were moonwalking. (to this day they can’t believe no one noticed.) they kissed their best friend’s girlfriend and made passes at the hot trig teacher and drove their dad’s car around at twice the speed limit.

adulthood has brought a mellowing, in the sense that they are less immediately reckless with their own body; at the same time, they now have the power to make poor decisions on a different scale. they have stopped paying rent at, and then abandoned, more than one apartment. they were once technically and very briefly married. they can’t remember the last time they saw a dentist.

ziwa still can’t quite say if joining the team in tyler’s place was a bad idea or not. if it was, then it was hands-down the worst idea ever. (it might not have been, though.)

they’ve calmed down more since joining the team; responsibilities help keep their days in order, keep them from swinging wildly off the highway at the last second. at first it was just to have something to do to in the numbness of tyler’s absence - ziwa had to exhaust themself physically just to sleep for a few hours, and the team gave them plenty of opportunities to run themself down. then, once enough time had gone by for them to wake up again and get that itch to do something stupid, they found they were already attached to the people they played with. it was harder to stay out all night drinking with strangers, knowing how disappointed richmond would look if ziwa came in late and hungover again. it was harder to skip meals for days running when lachlan brought in homemade team lunches and sent leftovers home with everyone.

there have been better and worse times over the years, of course. jaylen’s first season back was rough - but everyone was a little off the rails then. every time the anniversary of tyler’s death comes around, ziwa spends a few days letting themself sink into depression hard - they only shower every third or fourth day, sustain themself on spoonfuls of peanut butter and dry crackers. they’ve started coming back out of it faster though. last year they were only out of commission for like two, maybe three days tops. ziwa feels guilty that they don’t feel more guilty about that.

and there are the better times. ziwa has plants at home, and most of them have stayed alive for awhile now. they have a neighbor who they lend their key to when they’re at away games. they have a reminder set on their phone for the first of every month to pay the bills, and for the most part they actually follow through on that within a couple days.

even so - even after all these years slowing down, settling in to halifax, spreading our roots - this shouldn’t feel like such an all-time-record terrible idea. it shouldn’t make ziwa’s stomach flip harder than nearly falling off an actual _fucking_ cliff.

but every time they think about what it would be like if they actually kissed eugenia, they feel like they’re going to throw up and die.

it’s like they’re thirteen again, picking at the holes in their checkerboard vans and watching lindsay kaplan play guitar in the school courtyard. that year ziwa tried to impress lindsay by bouncing off a wall on their skateboard and fractured their tailbone; they had to sit on a stupid pillow for like two months and carry it around between classes and everything. 

ziwa is a grown-ass adult now. their day job is a sport with a higher fatality rate than auto racing. they _keep their shit together_. and christ, they’ve gone this many years without even _thinking_ about it, they’d have laughed so fucking hard even a few months ago - but all of a sudden the idea has lodged itself in their brain, and it itches so badly they just want to get it out the only way they know how. they want to do the incredibly stupid thing.

the problem is, ziwa isn’t thirteen anymore. just because eugenia’s laugh makes them feel giddy and terrified at the same time doesn’t mean it’s worth the risk of everything that could go wrong. not that _she_ isn’t worth it - they would never say that - but that whatever possible happiness ziwa might experience isn’t worth the risk of hurting eugenia (let alone the rest of the team).

this knowledge does absolutely nothing to soothe the itch in the back of their mind.

how many times has ziwa stepped up to bat, scanned their eyes across the field, and paused at the reassuring smile on eugenia’s face? and they never once thought anything of it, and now they don’t know how to _look_ at things naturally, they either flick their eyes back and forth without taking anything in or find themself gazing at eugenia far too long. ziwa can’t hit for crap lately. keeps misjudging when to swing and when to look. their body feels like it’s jittering a beat-and-a-half off pace.

the itch thinks of other ways it could be placated and broadcasts them through the rest of ziwa’s head, just like the old days. but instead of telling them to climb out the bedroom window or take the ride from that guy, it does things like: they’ll be walking behind eugenia and the voice will _say just grab her hand. you’re right behind her. all you have to do is reach forward. who says that’s gotta be a romantic gesture anyway?_ or when they’re eating shitty stadium hot dogs and eugenia wipes her mouth with her sleeve, smudging ketchup across her cheek, and the voice says, _don’t you want to touch her face?_

and of course ziwa fucking does! it’s taking so much fucking willpower not to, every single day. the desire is leaking out of their head in strange alternate pathways - they gave themself a new ear piercing at home, bought a pack of cigarettes for the first time in like a decade. they fucking tugged on eugenia’s ponytail the other day like a fucking six-year-old boy. (and eugenia - who is beautiful and perfect and funny and sweet - turned around laughing, faked like she was gonna knock ziwa’s cap off, and then took off running to pull york’s hair like it was a game of tag. it made ziwa’s chest _hurt_.)

the only thing worse than the endless list of the voice’s suggestions is the list of reasons why they don’t follow through. the list of things that could - or almost certainly would - fall apart if ziwa made one wrong move. the team is an intricate relational web, one that ziwa still feels compelled to mend the instant anything breaks. what kind of chaos could they set loose if they did something crazy like kiss eugenia? (and then that list intersects with yet another, this one called “a list of things that are too anxiety-wracking to even look at directly”, which is currently filled with a dozen variants on _and would she even want me to kiss her anyway._ )

and it’s been so many long years just for ziwa to get to here, to this moment of precarious safety, of actually believing they have a home now - why would they risk that? why would they be stupid enough to think they’ll get another lucky shot at happiness if they mess this one up?

so they fight off the worst ideas and give into the most innocent ones. they ride the increasingly narrow edge of plausible deniability: _i rested my head on her shoulder this long last time, i can stay here a minute more._ when it’s their turn to pick music in the team bus on the long ride to boston, they play nothing but love songs. they phrase things ambiguously; they pray that she both does and doesn’t know how serious ziwa is when they roll their eyes and say, _aren’t you so fuckin cute, you’re gonna be the death of me._

eugenia is like a puppy, or a balloon floating through a clear sky. she is perpetually unbothered, eternally unaware. she is as cheerfully filthy as she’s always been - unchanging as the cracked baseboard in ziwa’s bedroom - beautiful like the shimmering rainbow of an oil slick.

one night in chicago after a game ends late, the team goes out to dinner together and doesn’t start making their way to the train station until nearly midnight. they exit the diner in a cluster but begin to stretch out along the sidewalk like a strand of pearls, in groups of two or three. eugenia and ziwa end up at the back of the crowd. as they approach the station, they can hear the screech and rumble of an incoming train; up ahead, the others have started to run. eugenia grabs ziwa’s hand and takes off too. ziwa nearly trips, recovers, is too startled to think about eugenia’s hand in theirs.

they both scramble through the turnstiles in time, but they only make it halfway up the stairs to the platform before they hear the train wheels creak into motion again. when they emerge onto the platform, panting a bit, they’re the only ones left waiting.

the autumn air and stars against the sky are both crisp as a perfect apple. the wooden planks of the platform are thick and uneven; eugenia sits on a bench, the hem of her skirt almost touching the dirty wood. both of them are silent as they catch their breath. ziwa hits the button for one of the heat lamps & wishes they hadn’t - the mild warmth only makes the chill of the night more obvious.

the silence lasts, not uncomfortably, until the next train approaches. they’re close enough to the end of the line, late enough at night, that they’re the only two in the car. eugenia still sits down right next to ziwa so that ziwa is scrunched comfortably between her body and the window. the dark skeletons of trees pass by outside. their sides jostle against each other with the train’s vibrations. eugenia’s denim jacket smells of dirt, but in a good, springtime kind of way.

“where do you think you’d be,” eugenia says, “if you hadn’t joined the team?”

ziwa knows their answer before the question is all the way out of her mouth. “i don’t know, but it would suck.”

eugenia laughs. “yeah. same.”

stations pass by. sing-song pre-recorded messages call out the stops: _damen, montrose, irving park_. the doors slide open and then shut again; the train snakes over the gridded streets.

if joining the team wasn’t the worst idea ziwa’s ever had, then it’s got to be the best. they turn this idea over in their mind. it had sounded like the bad-idea voice at the time - whatever it was that had told them, _pick up the bat now. keep the game going_. 

that one bad decision alone has led ziwa all the way to here. to the barely-stable safety of the team, and to finally having people to see on holidays. to eugenia’s warmth next to them and the city lights dotting the main streets. they pass murals and wooden back porches and a tempered glass factory. the station announcements go on: _belmont, wellington, diversey_. ziwa looks at the train map posted above one set of doors; downtown, the train will do a loop and head back to the north end of the city. they think about what it would be like to stay here all night with eugenia, in a static bubble of this single moment. to just ride the train and watch the world go by and not see the sun rise until they were finally ready.

time doesn’t work that way. they have six stops before they have to get off.

eugenia pushes her bangs behind one ear; ziwa watches her reflection in the window. the lights of the skyscrapers downtown come into view in the distance. when ziwa looks back toward eugenia directly, she has the tiniest hint of a smile on her lips. her hand, resting on the metal bar of the seats in front of them, shakes even when the train pulls to a stop. ziwa has a horrible sense of inertia in the pit of their stomach, as if they are already falling off the cliff and their body hasn’t realized it yet. the ringing in their ears drowns out any internal voices.

they’re still so fucking scared. they imagine the possible timeline in which, years later, eugenia is saying _where would you be if you never kissed me that night?_

_it would suck_ , ziwa thinks, and leans forward into the fall.


End file.
